How to make Cheese
Basic Steps of How to Make Cheese Steps 1 - Start with fresh milk. * The nicer and the fresher the milk you use, the more delicious your cheese will be. * It is advisible to buy the milk at the same day that you make the cheese Steps 2 - Acidify the milk * One way is to dump acid (vinegar or citric acid) right into the milk to get the correct acidity. This process (called direct acidification) leads to cheeses such as ricotta and mascarpone * The other way to acidify the milk is to add cultures, or living bacteria. Given time, warmth and lack of competitor bacteria, these cultures will eat up the lactose in the milk, turning it into lactic acid. Steps 3 - Add a Coagulant * Mix the coagulant into the liquid milk and wait until a gel forms. Steps 4 - Test for Gel Firmness * When you've given the rennet enough time to work on the proteins in the milk, the milk will transform from a liquid into a gel. * You can test the 'doneness' of the gel by pressing (with a clean hand) onto the surface of the milk. Steps 5 - Cut the curd * cut the curd down from a giant blob into smaller cubes or chunks Steps 6 - Stir, Cook & Wash the Curd *For the next several minutes or even hour (depending on the recipe), you'll stir the curds in the vat. Possibly, you'll turn on the heat and cook the curds while you stir. During this phase, the most important thing that is happening is acid is continuing to develop inside the curd and, from the motion of your stirring, the curds are drying out. The more you cook and the more you stir, the drier your cheese will be. *Washing is the process of removing some of the whey from the vat and replacing it with water. This creates a milder, sweeter, more elastic cheese and cheese paste. Steps 7 - Drain the Curds * You might do this nearly final step by simply dumping the contents of the pot into a colander in a sink. * Wait 10 minutes to let the curds settle to the bottom then press the curds together at the bottom of the pot before bringing them up and out of the pot in chunks. * Work quickly at this point in the process because want to conserve the heat into the curds, encouraging them to mush back together to form a nice smooth wheel. * If wait too long, the curds get cold and the cheese falls apart. Steps 8 - Salt and Age the Cheese * Once the curds have been separated from the whey, add salt. Or, can move the curds into their final forms (or baskets) and press the cheese into a wheel before salting. * If a cheese is salted, properly acidified and has the correct amount of moisture inside, it can be aged into something more complex. Or it can be eaten immediately--the same moment it was made.